Time Out

We are in an exceptionally low spot with the teenager. I am exhausted and sad and I can't keep going round and round, making myself sick with worry and watching him slip farther away.

I'm familiar with the kind of pain that feels crushing and infinite. My boys were born 14 weeks early and spent their first 3 months in the hospital - nine months later, my father drank himself to death.

And yet this pain is different. The fear is there, but it's more ambiguous...it keeps changing on me. The feeling of helplessness is there, only this time there's a guilt that comes with it...like maybe I'm wrong...maybe I'm not helpless, maybe I just haven't done the right thing yet. And, of course, the feeling of obligation to give and give until I have nothing left. These feelings are eating me alive.

So we're calling a time out...a ceasefire in the parents vs. teenage war...time to think and recharge and hopefully avoid doing anything any of us will regret later. And I hope it will help. I am hopeful that it will help. Right now, I'll take hope wherever I can get it.